And just like that, we became a nation of bakers.
One day we were saying "Do you think this coronavirus thing is going to be bad?" and the next we were all at home in our flour-covered aprons baking loaves upon loaves of bread and wondering why we couldn't find yeast at the stores.
The bread-baking continues unabated, and so, to some extent, does the yeast shortage. Flour, fortunately, is more widely available, though not necessarily the kind you want. Whole wheat and bread flours are still hard to find.
Now that so many Americans have rediscovered the simple, calming joys of baking bread, I decided to make a handful of my favorite varieties. They are the loaves that have sustained me _ in more ways than one _ through the pandemic.
I have one caveat: Bread-making is a time-consuming process. Most of the time is not hands-on, so you can be doing other things elsewhere in your house or apartment, but you have to return to the kitchen every so often to perform the next step.
The one exception to the slow-and-steady bread-baking rule is One-Hour Bread, which, as the name implies, takes one hour to make from start to finish. It is a perfectly acceptable loaf, especially toasted, but with more available time in the kitchen I prefer to make breads that are heartier, more complex and, frankly, better.
The kind I make most frequently is Jim Lahey's revolutionary No-Knead Bread. It is very nearly as good as any loaf you can get at a bakery, and is especially easy to make. And because the dough develops its flavor overnight, you can literally sleep through most of the process.
Lahey, who owns the famous Sullivan Street Bakery in New York, discovered (or rediscovered) the secret to making full-flavored bread: time. The longer it takes bread to rise, the more it develops a robust taste. Lahey only uses \ teaspoon of yeast, which means the dough takes at least 12 hours to fully rise.
The recipe is exceptional on its own, but I like to play around with it a little. I often use equal amounts of all-purpose flour and a fancy-pants high-protein flour that is brutally expensive ($10 for 3 pounds) but actually kind of worth it. It gives the loaf an appealingly nutty flavor and a slightly coarser texture.
I also use the same basic recipe to make Lahey's version of whole-wheat bread. It uses 2 \ cups of all-purpose flour and } cup of whole wheat (but you can change the proportions, as long as the amount adds up to 3 cups of flour), and requires { teaspoon of yeast. I don't even like whole wheat bread very much, but this one is absolutely amazing. It has whatever it is that other whole wheat loaves lack.
For my next loaves, I made chocolate bread. You heard me: chocolate bread.
It's not what you probably imagine it to be, but it is amazing nonetheless.
It is not cake or even remotely cakelike; it is bread with chocolate in it, and it is barely sweet at all. It is a loaf of elegance _ actually, three loaves _ just the sort of thing that you can picture being served for breakfast at a French bakery with a steaming bowl of cafe au lait.
As a matter of fact, the idea for the recipe apparently came from a French bakery called Maison Landemaine. It is exquisite in the way French baked goods are often exquisite _ not too sweet and not too rich.
I am literally eating a slice as I write this. My wife just said, "it is chocolate for adults."
On a few occasions I have made an extraordinary bread called, ironically, Pain Ordinaire (pain is French for "bread"). Although this type takes the shortest amount of time to make _ you can enjoy it the same day you started it _ it has a brawny flavor.
And yet, it is made with a minimum of ingredients: flour, yeast, water and salt. What makes this country bread different, and so great, is the technique.
Other doughs rise until they are twice their original volume. This one actually triples in volume, which means it requires a flour with a significant amount of protein so it can withstand the expansion without collapsing. Bread flour is best, or that expensive, fancy-pants flour that is made from hard winter wheat.
Either way, it makes a bread that is anything but ordinary.
I next made a couple of exceptional loaves of Honfleur Country Bread, a wonderfully rustic bread noted for its nutty flavor enlivened with just a hint of sweetness.
The sweetness comes from honey, which is primarily used to feed the yeast, but has the salutary secondary effect of making the bread taste just a little honeyed. And the nuttiness comes from the whole-wheat flour, which is mixed in more or less equal amounts with all-purpose flour or bread flour.
It is a thoroughly enjoyable, substantial bread that goes with just about everything and can be served in just about any circumstance.
Which brings us to the baguettes. For my last bread, I made baguettes.
I had made baguettes before. They weren't bad, but, to be honest, they kind of tasted like long cylinders of ordinary bread.
But I decided to make these after running across a recipe for baguettes and a video showing techniques for making them that seemed special. The results looked like real baguettes.
But ... this is not a recipe (or techniques) for the faint of heart, and especially not for a novice baker. It takes something like 28 hours, though you could sleep through nearly all of the first 24.
And the result of all of this time and effort? Baguettes. Real, genuine, honest-to-God baguettes.
It's not just that the outside is crusty and the inside has a tender crumb. They actually taste like real baguettes, the kind you get from a French bakery. The kind you bring home from a boulangerie, with a bottle of inexpensive but fabulous red wine and a wedge of comte cheese, or perhaps brie.
These are baguettes, the way baguettes are supposed to be made. And they are certainly baguettes the way baguettes are supposed to be eaten.
The recipe makes three baguettes. Before the last one is finished, you'll want to get a start on making your next batch.
